Time to Invest in Target?

The National Organization for Marriage might just turn into my personal investment guru.

See, NOM is twirling itself around in boycott frenzy these day. It launched one against JP Morgan Chase on July 16, and another against Target on August 7. It’s hard to know whether these boycotts will hurt the companies — oh, who am I kidding? NOM’s been issuing boycotts for a while now and the results are impressive.

Brian Brown recently claimed the Starbucks boycott led “many countries” (which ones? who can say?) to keep Starbucks from entering their markets. That’s a scary message to shareholders, so let’s take on that perspective. Suppose you were an investor who kept hearing about these boycotts, an investor who decided on September 10, 2012, to split $10,000 among these three companies that NOM so bravely took on. Brian Brown, I’m sure, would think you a fool. And how foolish would you have to be?

So foolish that your $10,000 investment in the boycotted companies would now be worth about $19,411, a return of more than 94%.

That’s how foolish you would be.

But, you know, it’s been a great year for stocks in general. What would your return have been if you’d invested in the Dow-Jones index?

24%.

In case you were wondering, 24 is less than 94. But there are other stock indices. What about NASDAP? 38%. Standard & Poors? 34%. And you might have heard that real estate is bouncing back, but returns in that market are still less than any of the ones I’ve listed here.

So, good work, NOM. Ever thought about launching a boycott against me? Who knows — I might get a raise out of it.